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They were already too fatigued for this fight. They are outnumbered.

They will lose.

They will all die.

“I can see why he likes you, Dawsyn,” Adrik pants, his cold breath filling her own mouth, sickening her. “You have a certain spirit about you.”

Dawsyn turns her face away, and there is Baltisse.

Weary Baltisse, her body slumped. Appearing at the lip, unnoticed by those amid their fight. With a desperate look at Dawsyn, she takes two humans and disappears.

The mage, still saving the remaining. So perhaps they won’t all lose. Perhaps some will die for the survival of the many, as it was proclaimed by Queen Alvira all those years ago. They only need to stay alive long enough to hold off Adrik and his men. Just a little longer.

Dawsyn’s stare returns to Adrik. She remains still as the Izgoi-turned-king brings the edge of his sword to her throat. “I’ll cut your throat enough that you’ll bleed,” he says to her now, “but not enough that we can’t throw you into the pool. You can spend the rest of your existence as an empty shell, wandering the dungeons of Glacia, where I can lie on top of you any time I please.”

There have been many times when men have devolved to threats of abuse and torture in Dawsyn’s life. All have died soon after.

Inside her, the light and dark magic knit as one. Two threads bound together. They weave through her now, filling every crevice of her, every fibre, until she is painfully full. If these are to be her last moments, they will not be spent beneath this Glacian with wings as pitiful as the rest of him. If she must die in this place of her birth, it will be for the lives of her people, and not for him.

Dawsyn fills her lungs with all the breath she can muster. She commands every tendril of pain and hope and love and hatred to detonate, and then screams.

“IGNISS!”

Red. The Ledge turns red.

Dawsyn becomes fire, combusting with light and heat. The burn of the iskra and the fire of mage blood combine in a cosmic surge that blinds her. Adrik is gone, flying away from her, his wings and hair alight in flame.

Bodies everywhere tumble away from the fire into the mercy of snow. Dawsyn lets her ax fall into the sweet spot of her palm, looks to it once, and stumbles forward. She brings it down into the neck of a Glacian with all the force she can muster. She sees Ryon slam his hands over the sleeve that caught fire and then drive his fist into the face of another.

Dawsyn glances to the Chasm and sees that only two humans remain.Only two more.

Tasheem lies face down in the snow. Dawsyn cannot tell if she is alive or dead. She yells to Rivdan, who is bringing himself to stand, but stumbling. “Take Tash!” Dawsyn gasps. “Go!” she shouts. “GO!”

He listens. Hastening over to Tasheem, he hefts her into his arms and lifts them from the ground. Tasheem does not rouse. Groaning in pain, Rivdan flies them over the lip and disappears into the Chasm.

Adrik howls in the distance, his body falling again and again into the snow. He tries to let his wings carry him into the sky, but they are torn and burned, rendered useless.

Dawsyn sees Baltisse reappear on the ice, slipping and falling to her hands and knees. She can hear the mage’s pained rasps from where she stands. “Baltisse!” she calls. But the mage only stands, shuddering violently. She takes the hands of the remaining two, and with a wracking breath, folds them away.

All of them,Dawsyn thinks.We saved all of them.

A cry rings out. One Dawsyn wishes she did not recognise. But she has heard this sound of pain before. In the Glacian palace, when talons had ripped through Ryon’s shoulder amidst a battle just like this.

Dawsyn sees Ryon’s knees buckle, sees the spray of blood beneath him in the snow. She sees the knife sticking out of his back. The last of Adrik’s Glacians stands behind him, his sword rising above Ryon’s head.

And Dawsyn has no more store of power. It is gone. Depleted.

From over the Chasm, comes the sound of dozens of wings taking to the sky.

A battalion of Glacians taking flight. Coming for them.

Ryon sees them just as she does, and then his eyes lock with hers.

He pushes himself to his feet with gruelling difficulty. He runs for her, just as she runs for him. Desperately closing the space between them.

Ryon lunges for her at the same moment that she reaches for him. They collide in the middle.

Ryon tries to throw them into flight, their very last bid for survival, but the knife in his back brings them down, and Ryon falls heavily onto the ice.